This section introduces aspects that may be helpful in facilitating a better understanding of the invention. Accordingly, the statements of this section are to be read in this light and are not to be understood as admissions about what is in the prior art or what is not in the prior art.
The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) attempts to create a uniform third-generation mobile phone system. 3GPP standards are called releases and different functionality is present in the different versions of the releases. The 3GPP standards continue to evolve and the major releases of the standards can be differentiated using supported features. However, there also may be differences between minor versions of the 3GPP standards that render them incompatible with each other. In addition, different vendors might implement major versions at different stages or at different time resulting in different implementations of a particular major version which can lead to compatibility issues when interacting with network nodes from different vendors.
Diameter is a computer networking protocol for AAA (Authentication, Authorization and Accounting) defined in Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) RFC 3588, which is hereby incorporated by reference. 3GPP Network nodes communicate using Diameter commands and to maintain extensibility, typically use a Diameter command dictionary to provide the format of commands and Attribute Value Pairs (AVPs). Definitions of Diameter commands, their associated AVPs, and whether one is optional or mandatory are expected to be static but unfortunately can vary with different versions. Incompatibility issues between different network nodes running different versions of a major release can include not only different definitions of an AVP but also the behavior or implementation of various commands. A traditional Diameter command dictionary implementation is limited in how it can address these issues.
Hence, there is a need for a system for handling Diameter commands with improved flexibility.